


Seek and Destroy

by golden_gardenias



Series: Gallavich Week 2014 [4]
Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Angst, Discussions of Illicit Sexual Activity, Gallavich Week, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Protective!Mickey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-22
Updated: 2014-07-22
Packaged: 2018-02-10 00:36:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2004129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/golden_gardenias/pseuds/golden_gardenias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The boys head to the clinic for an STD panel.  Mickey is unprepared for what is revealed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seek and Destroy

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Gallavich Week 2014 Day 4: Hurt/Comfort. Originally published on Tumblr 6/19/14.
> 
> Continuation of Day 3: "The Douchiest"

As promised, Mickey took Ian to the local clinic the next day.

Mickey was getting tested too, just to be safe.  They were sitting in the waiting room, filling out forms about their sexual history.  It hadn’t taken Mickey very long to finish his, since his sexual contact in the last six months had been his hand and the redheaded woman from The Alibi.

He’d told himself before they came that he wouldn’t pry or push Ian, but he snuck a quick glance next to the chair next to him to check on his progress.

Ian was stone still, and the hand holding the pen was still poised above the clipboard, shaking.  He’d only managed to fill out his name.

“…Ian?” Mickey asked tentatively.

He didn’t answer, and Mickey noticed that he was breathing shallowly as well.  “Ian.  Hey, what’s wrong?”

He extended a hand to Ian’s shoulder, but he flinched away from the attempt at comfort.  Mickey let his hand hang in the air, watching Ian like he was a wounded animal.

“Ian.  Look at me, man.”

He could hear Ian’s breathing speed up and watched his eyes dart around the room before finally settling on Mickey.

Christ, he looked fucking terrified.  His eyes started to well up with tears.

“Come on, come with me.”  Mickey stood up and grabbed Ian’s hand to lead him to a bathroom, indifferent to the people who could see them.

Once they found one, he locked them in, turning to face the trembling boy before him.  Ian was staring at himself in the mirror, the tears that had made his eyes shine finally trekking down his cheeks.  He looked so broken that the sudden burst of anger as his fist connected with the image of his face made Mickey jump.

“Christ, Gallagher, the fuck is wrong with you?!”  He rushed forward to inspect his hand, but Ian yanked it away from him.

“Don’t touch me!” he yelped.

Mickey backed up a few steps, hands in the air.  “Alright, Ian, alright.  I won’t touch you.  You wanna tell me what the hell that was about?”

Ian’s chest was heaving, his eyes wild.  “I—I can’t— _I don’t know!_ ” he screamed.  “I don’t know half the answer to those questions, Mickey!  I don’t even fucking know their  _names_ , oh  _God_ —” he broke off and started sobbing, falling to the floor.

Mickey didn’t know what to do.

Mandy hardly ever cried, and when she did she locked herself in her room until she was done.  He was at a loss, having no practical experience soothing the sobbing.

He decided to wait for a cue from Ian as to what he wanted him to do.

After a few minutes of standing awkwardly in front of the bathroom door watching Ian cry and trying to control the overwhelming emotions pulling him in different directions—ranging from  _fuck please stop crying I can’t handle seeing you in pain_  to  _whoever fucking did this to him will fucking **pay**_ —Ian made his way over to a wall and leaned against it, sniffling.

His glassy eyes found Mickey’s troubled ones, and he decided that was enough.  He went to Ian and sat next to him, waiting for him to speak.

“I thought it was weird,” he started, voice cracking, “the way they would look at me.  It felt like the way Kash would look at me before we started fucking.  But then sometimes it felt…different.  I don’t know how to explain it.”  He stopped for a moment.  “You remember when we watched  _Fight Club_?”

Mickey nodded.

“What was it Narrator said when he was pounding on that blond guy?”

_I felt like destroying something beautiful._

“Yeah, that’s it.”  Mickey hadn’t realized he’d spoken.  “It felt like that.”

Mickey wanted Ian to stop talking.  He could sense where this was going and he didn’t want it; didn’t want to have the images in his head, didn’t want to wake from nightmares needing to see Ian’s face to know he was safe, didn’t want the murderous rage he knew would consume him until he was reduced to little more than a seek and destroy missile—

He stayed silent.

“One of the younger drill sergeants”—

_don’t tell me his name, don’t say his name, if you tell me his name I’ll have to hunt him down and I don’t want to go to prison; no fuck it tell me the fucker’s name so I can rip him apart_

—“Cody, used to watch me work out.  He would make up bullshit excuses to make me run laps or do pull-ups, and I remember thinking that at least I would get laid while I was trying to forget you.”

He stopped abruptly, as if he realized at the last second that he probably shouldn’t have said that.  Mickey didn’t say anything, waiting for him to continue.

“He came into the barracks one night, while we were all sleeping, brought me back to his cabin.  He had some weed, gave me some beer.  Kept dancing around why I was really there, talking about my endurance and stamina, but when he got around to it…” Ian broke off again, collecting himself.  “He wanted to top, and I’d never done it before.”

_fuckfuckfuck **no** , that bastard did  **not** take his virginity_

“I thought it would be different.”

He stopped and Mickey kept his eyes on a fixed point on the floor, simultaneously trying to block everything out and hanging on Ian’s every breath.

“It was a week before he came back for me again, except this time when we got to his cabin there were other guys there.”

_**NO**_.

The thought was so loud in Mickey’s head that he could barely hear what Ian said next.  The blood rushing through his head drowned everything out, but phrases like “tried to run” and “held me down” and “god it hurt so much” kept breaking through and  _if he ever fucking met any of those fuckers—_

“Mickey?”

Ian’s voice was small and timid, his eyes shining with fresh tears, and fuck if that didn’t just rip Mickey to shreds.

“Mick, your hands—”

And that was when he noticed he’d been clenching his fists so hard that his nails were cutting into his palms.  The stinging pain grounded him, and he took a deep breath.  “I’m fine,” he breathed out.

Was this what Ian worked so hard to keep out of his head while he was staying up all hours of the night?  Was he high so he didn’t feel those hands?  Did he avoid sleep so he wouldn’t see those faces?

Mickey didn’t think he would ever sleep again.

“When—when he came the last time, I just—I bolted.  I didn’t know what to do.  I panicked and I ran, but I knocked over a water fountain and woke everyone up, so he had me do push-ups and sing that  _song_ —”

Ian broke down again, crying on his shoulder.  Mickey wanted to wrap his arms around him but he couldn’t move, couldn’t think anything beyond  _kill kill **kill**_  and _i’m so fucking **sorry**_.

He was vaguely aware of someone banging on the door, but he ignored them.

He could fill in the rest of Ian’s story for himself: could imagine that burst of adrenalin as he’d scrambled out of bed being the trigger for whatever had been unleashed on his brain; could see him walking around high on fucking sunshine and rainbows and willing to do  _anything_  to keep the hands off his skin and the faces from behind his eyelids and the voices out of his ears; could see him seeing himself in Mandy, working so hard to save her because it meant that maybe he could save himself.

They sat on the bathroom floor crying and holding each other until a maintenance man unlocked the door and found them, much to the relief of the people waiting in the line that had formed.

An attendant that worked there gave them a sympathetic look as she told them they had to leave, probably thinking they were breaking down because their test results and  _shit_ , they hadn’t even taken their fucking tests.

She wrapped their hands for them and handed them their clipboards back.  “We’ll try to fit you in when we can,” she said kindly.

Her smile twisted Mickey’s gut.

Ian was even more hollow than before, staring blankly at the papers before him.  Mickey watched him for a few seconds longer before saying, “We don’t have to stay.”

Ian turned to look at him.  “We can come back some other time if you need to.  I’m not…you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, alright?  No one’s forcing you to do anything you aren’t comfortable with.”

He looked back down at the forms, considering.  “I want to get it over with,” he said quietly.

Something like pride flooded through Mickey, and he reached over to hold Ian’s hand.  Ian looked down in surprise and smiled at him, and fuck if that wasn’t the greatest thing he’d ever seen.

Ian threaded their fingers together.  The FUCK inked into his weathered knuckles stood out against Ian’s pale skin, but he liked it that way.

It was a warning.


End file.
